gangrene

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The necrosis and rotting of flesh, usually caused by lack of blood supply.

   “If gangrene sets in, we may have to amputate the foot.”

2. (countable, figuratively, uncountable)A damaging or corrupting influence.

   “Women should earn equal wages with men for equal work done. Child marriages and polygamy are a gangrene on society.”

verb

1. (transitive)To produce gangrene in.

   “Vulneration or section sometimes procures a Gangrene, when the vital Principle is so debilitated, or enormous by the would, that instead of a good suppuration and vigorous transmutation, a depraved matter is generated, which corrupts and gangrenes the part: and thus a small cut of a finger or Toe hath gangrened, and killed the person: but in greater Wounds, the danger is greater, as more frequently to happen.”

   “An intensely biting frost will gangrene the membrane ; a foggy state of the atmosphere, with low, black, stagnant exhalations, accompanied with sudden, frequent intermissions, interchanges, and oscillations of dryness and moisture, expansion and condensation, will corrupt and putrify both the membrane and the mucous discharge.”

   “For where it chances to be successful, it is like the copper shot of the Mexicans, which gangrenes the wound.”

2. (intransitive)To be affected with gangrene.

   “The leg will gangrene if the superficial femoral vessels be torn.”

   “If not, the toe will gangrene and fall off.”

3. (transitive)To corrupt; To cause to become degenerate.

   “That is true,” replied Almira, “nothing can be performed without labor, and where there is labor there will be discontent, and where there is no labor there will be heart-burning and jealousy about insignificant trifles, such as gangrenes the real pleasures of contemplation within these walls; walls, which would otherwise hold out an asylum, much to be prized by those who have been unfortunate, who have lost all their friends, or who are weary of the world."”

   “The Stuart Restoration period was a necessary sequence of the Puritan period, and there is a similar cause for the sensualism that gangrenes the heart of our morbidly prudish Society of to-day.”

   “The same delusion will gangrene England within the lifetime of most men of military age unless she will realize that gold is dross ; that her poets, her artists, and her scholars are her very soul.”